JaunsCorner.com Blog

Did you know, that there is no toilet paper left anymore on this beautiful WSIS 2005 rest room I just got to - or well, let’s say HAD TO use?

Finally, this is the time when I feel something like thankful that so many Leo-Confirmation-Letters had been sent to me before the summit; - erm - yes…

We just got visited by Moritz Leuenberger, who is the Vice President of the Swiss Confederation 2005.

Mr. Leuenberger first greeted “this famous dog, Leo” and laughed at the badge he was wearing. After also introducing himself to me, he noticed that on the Screen Magnifying Demo Unit, his page was being displayed; then he sat down next to me and got an introduction to the basics of accessibility and technology for the blind. We also visited his web page and discovered together that it was quite accessible already, but that the “Spacer” Graphics had to be either re-labelled or untagged; we also took a glance at his “Speeches” page, noticing that the designers missed to label the different language contents with their appropriate Language Tags.

Before leaving, he asked about older people and their ability to still leanr braile writing; then, he thanked me for visiting his web site, shook hands again and kind of was forced to move on

His visit took about 20 minutes and was definitely longer than the one from Samuel Schmid the other day. I wanted to provide an MP3 of it, but since my Recorder knows hot to suck - well, guess I don’t have to say more. But there should be a video of it within like seven years online somehow somewhere

Mr. Leuenberger is obviously very interested in Accessibility issues. He already did write a preface to a study on accessibility a time ago; good to know that there are highest people around thinking of the matter…

We are expecting more people to show up during the day, so I will keep you posted.

I slept pretty bad that night. First, my dog tried to jump onto my bed - no clue why he did that at all, but he must probably have realized that the place next to me in that double bed was not being used. As rule following as I am, I nevertheless had to push him back down on his own Posto

Then, when I was fallen back asleep, my phone started ringing because a Thunderstorm obviously tried to call me. This thunderstorm did not answer any questions I asked, but was only as noisy as all his colleagues, and so it is clear that our conversation was rather short. Some hours later, when I was checking emails at our WSIS 2005 stand, I found out that the thunderstorm would have been my girlfriend and that our phone call was nothing but a greatest example how well the phone system works over here. She does, by the way, not sound like any thunderstorm at all when you talk to her normally. But who knows how many quality destroying Secret Service Agents our phone line was directed through…

After giving up getting sleep, we made it to the Kram Park pretty fast, at least compared to the days before (it took, for example, only three minutes to convince the bus driver to let us in).

Throughout the morning, I served a few guests and put in some pictures into the blog (I hope you love them!!!). We actually were supposed to be visited by the Swiss Vice President, but after first postponing his visit to late afternoon, finally the message dropped in that he would check us out on Friday, which he better does, since it will be our last day on the summit.

Instead and surprisingly to me, Dr. Robert Aymar, the Director General of CERN (world’s largest particle physics laboratory), showed up and asked me for a very detailed presentation of my job, screen reading technology and accessibility issues we are dealing with. He even took an ear full of the CERN’s web site and told me that he never had seen the technology giving blind people access to computers before.

Later, another man approached me. It was Ben Segal, a retired CERN staff member who told us that the Director General just spent more time with us than with the CERN staff themselves. He then not only told us about his relationship to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the The World Wide Web (Ben was on of the important ones when it came to bringing the Internet to CERN, though he clearly states that Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW), but also introduced me to the further developed Seti At Home project, which is now Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). BOINC offers a platform for everyone who is in need of huge computizing power. It delivers the necessary resources by using participating personal computers all around the world, which, during their idle times, process little blocks of the whole job. He was involved in running the first serious “voluntary computer grids” and is now introducing African students so they might be able to use the concept of sharing computing power all around the world at their universities. The great part about this and BOINC is that everyone can participate; so if you have your own computer, you might want to give it a try. Check out the BOINC Web Site and take a look at the projects you can make your computer work for (they have everything from Climate Prediction to helping researchers to develop cures for human diseases. AND… Let me know if you participate, because we might want to consider building a BOINC Team then, OK?

Well, anyways: As there was no Vice President to expect anymore, we decided to leave the WSIS 2005 earlier than usually this day and check out the little town of Sidi Bou Saïd (after which by the way the hotel we are staying at was named); it is obviously one of the most beautiful places in Tunisia or around Tunis and we were hoping to find some Souvenirs there.

While we got an always changing mix of rain and sun, we kind of sauntered the narrow streets of the town, enjoying the Tunisians either staring at or fleeing from Leo. At the market, I got myself a touristy peace of crap for the price of a peace of silver (”Even With An Official Certificate Of Authenticity….”). The only things you obviously can buy at this market are drums (which I already have), self-made birdcages (which I don’t need) or ‘the Hand Of Fatima’ Key Chains, which I finally got, still doubting if it was worth it.

For the price of a paper handkerchief in Switzerland I then also bought myself a CD of African Music (Note: they did NOT have Tunisian Music in the store); when I asked for a “Tunisia” T-Shirt, the sales agent recommended buying a white t-shirt and make the “Tunisia” writing myself; then, she thanked me for wanting the name of their country on a t-shirt and finally sold me a kind of out of fashion thingy in the end. She also wanted to sell a second shirt to Leo, but this is another story.

We also bought a couple tons of dates, which you can get everywhere. In the store we bought them, the only had two sorts of dates, but I heard that in other places, you could easily get dozens of different kinds. So far, I ate dates every day since we have been here, all together probably more than I have eaten within the last few years. They all smell kind of the same to me, but during dinner, we had to learn that the ones we bought this afternoon were of course, not only second, but like fifth or seventh quality dates. The waiter, laughing at our selection, even brought some better dates for us to try (he didn’t have the best ones “only second choice ones”, he said), but don’t worry: They still tasted just like - dates.

Before leaving for my room, I checked out the little souvenir shop they have in the hotel - or to be more honest: I stood in front of the shop’s door, while Markus from our team, together with the Leo-Scared sales agent, tried to let me know the items of interest for me - I really don’t know how and why Leo can make those Tunisian Women scream and tremble that much; but I hope she feels better now that she knows we are leaving tomorrow.

Before going to bed, I took the time to give Leo a bath. He did not seem to like it very much, but at least he was able to stand nicely in the tub for quite a while. Due to the water being mixed with some chlorine, one cannot say that he really smells way better now, but if one really tries, one is still able to smell some shampoo on his coat.

Tomorrow will be our last day. We will depart for Switzerland on Saturday Morning though, but since they are having a “Goodbye Delegation” kind of event at the Swiss Embassy Residence, we might not have to return to the hotel at all, but just stay there until our early morning flight leaves.

They call it “Wine And Cheese Buffet Event”; dates are not mentioned obviously - kind of sad actually…

There is not too much to say about yesterday I guess, but let’s see what we find.
The morning, the time before getting to the exhibition halls, was extremely chaotic. To hotel staff kept communicating about every story from “The bus will leave in five minutes” to “there has never been a bus planed for today”; the only thing all their announcements had in common was that the whole mess was not only because of the heavy traffic this morning, but also “Due To Security Reasons…..”.

Now, since not only buses did not seem to show up but neither the hall manager who was supposed to bring Leo and me to our stand, even I tried to be something like nervous. Well, it then happened after waiting much too long that still one of those buses made it to our hotel at all and since nobody knew how long the hall manager would take to show up, we took this bus - YEP, and this time, it worked fine. Of course, the bus driver and some passengers almost died when they saw my funny Labrador, wearing his brand new badge, but I guess everybody survived and we made it safely to the Kram Park.

At the WSIS 2005 gates, we found like the longest lines ever, but still made it in within an acceptable time.
The reason why especially the Swiss people were supposed to be exactly on time was the visit of the president of our confederation, Samuel Schmid. Throughout the morning, until he finally did show up, everybody, including me, seemed to be in this stupid “Let’s kind of plan every move that he and us are going to make and every word to say” mood; and of course, when he actually came to the Access For All/OFCOM/Design For All stand (90 minutes or more delayed), nothing was put into action as planed
At least I was able to notify him about the fact that Leo was most intelligent, about some mistakes on his web site and about me finding it nice to meet him and stuff.

Before visiting us, by the way, he held one of the opening speeches to the summit, in which he addressed Tunisia and once more the whole Human Rights Scandals going on day by day. He expressed his expectations that it should be possible to have freedom of speech and freedom of press within and outside of the summit areas. That this was definitely not the case, I found out when trying to access the Swiss Info web site, which probably reports some facts that the Tunisian Government rather would not like its people to know about - The site has been inaccessible for multiple days; and the error message (which is absolutely not typical for Swissinfo) is displayed in French only (which is what they speak here), but in no other language.

Well, the rest of the day was indeed rather boring. We had some cool guests though, including some blind ones from Tunisia and Chile, and sighted ones from a couple other countries, such as France or Liechtenstein.
Leo was being cuddled from time to time. He had a better day in general, at least during the summit; it is now easier to enter the hall with him and moving around.

In the hotel, on the other hand, there still seem to be skeptical glances thrown at us when we are hanging around with the animal. The other part of the staff is opening up slowly. And the rest of Tunisia I would say is still the same.

The dinner was just normal; I got a bunch of fish tonight and a Strawberry called but like apricot tasting juice.

Tomorrow, we might get visited by another high Minister of the Swiss government, who, as I was told, should have more time to spend with us than the president himself
I generally hope that tomorrow will be different than today, like more fun or whatever, at least something more than just famous and boring.

PS: Oh yep, for those who do speak more French than I do, check out this Article from the Le Temps Newspaper featuring, among other stuff, our stand and a very certain dog…

We just got visited by Samuel Schmid, who is this year’s President of the Swiss Confederation.

Mr. Schmid, after greeting me and my dog (asking how well he could adapt to the crowds and being astonished about the fact that the people had more problems with him than the other way round), told me that he had seen aiding technology for the blind in action when visiting the School for the blind in the city of Zug (Which, by the way, doesn’t exist - he must have meant the one in the city of Bar I guess) the other day. I then explained to him what my job was (checking web sites on their accessibility for those aids and their users) and showed him a small sample of what his own web site sounded like to users of Speech Synthetic Software.
He then called me one of his employees, asked for a business card, promised to send me something and encouraged me to inform his team of any inaccessibilities to be found on his web site.

Then, shaking hands and cuddling Leo once more, he left us.

Besides, we had another coupple of clients, mostly from Tunisia and mostly challenging my terrible French Knowledge